The present invention relates generally to the field of semiconductor technology, and more particularly to the formation of a selective in-situ dopant junction for III-V semiconductor device.
Semiconductor device scaling to smaller feature sizes is facing significant challenges. Traditional semiconductor materials and processes for device formation become less effective as physical dimensions shrink down to the nanometer range. Increasing use of low effective mass semiconductor materials provides an increase in the maximum obtainable velocity of charge carriers such as electrons and holes. The effective mass is the mass an electron or a hole appears to have when in a solid material. The effective mass of electrons and holes in semiconducting materials, in general, is lower than the mass of a free electron.
Group III-V semiconductor materials provide smaller effective mass than Group IV semiconductor materials and are thus, desirable for increasing performance due to a corresponding increase in electron velocity associated with lower effective mass. Group IV and Group III-V refers to the location of the semiconductor element in a column of the Periodic Table of Elements. A group of semiconductor elements generally share similar characteristics, for example, similar physical and electrical characteristics of the outermost shell of electrons. A Group III-V semiconductor is a semiconductor material that includes at least one element or semiconductor material from Group III and at least one element or semiconductor material from Group V of the Periodic Table of Elements. Group III-V semiconductor materials see increasing use in high performance semiconductor devices, particularly, in the nanometer range.